40 AUBREY'S NATURAL HISTORY OF WILTSHIRE. 







are great indications of iron, and it may be of coale ; but what hopes he should have to discover silver 

 does passe my understanding. There was a great friendship between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir 

 Walter Long, and they were allied : and the pitt was sunk in Sir W. Raleigh's time, so that he must 

 certainly have been consulted with. I have here annexed Sir James Long's letter. 



' Mr. Aubrey, I cannot obey your commands concerning my grandfather's sinking of pitts for 

 metalls here at Draycott, there being no person alive hereabouts who was born at that time. What 

 I have heard was so long since, and I then so young, that there is little heed to be taken of what I 

 can say ; but in generall I can say that I doe believe here are many metalls and mineralls in these 

 parts ; particularly silver-oare of the blew sort, of which there are many stones in the bottome of 

 the river Avon, wliich are extremely heavy, and have the hardnesse of a file, by reason of the many 

 mineral! and metalline veines. I have consulted many bookes treating of minerall matters, and find 

 them suite exactly with the Hungarian blew silver oare. Some sixteen or eighteen yeares ago in 

 digging a well neer my house, many stones very weighty where digged out of the rocks, which also 

 slaked with long lyeing in the weather. I shewed some to Monsieur Cock, since Baron of Crown- 

 strome in Sweden, who had travelled ten yeares to all the mines in North Europe, and was recom- 

 mended to me by a London merchant, in his journey to Mindip, and staied with me here about three 

 weekes. He told me the grains in that oare seemed to be gold rather than copper ; they resembled 

 .small pinnes heads. Wee pounded some of it, and tried to melt the dust unwashed in a crucible ; but 

 the sulphur carried the inetall away, if there was any, as he said. He has been in England since, 

 by the name of Baron Crownstrome, to treat from his master the King of Sweden, over whose mines 

 he is superintendent, as his father was before him. The vitriol-oare we find here is like suckwood, 

 which being layd in a dry place slakes itself into graine of blew vitriol, calcines red, and with a 

 small quantitie of galles makes our water very black hike. It is acid tasted as other vitriol, and apt 

 to raise a flux in the mouth. " Sir, yours, &c. 



"August 12, 1G89. "J. L." 



' In the parish of Great Badminton, hi a field called Twelve Acres, the husbandmen doe often 

 times plough up and find iron bulletts, as big as pistoll bulletts ; sometimes almost as big as muskett 

 bulletts." Dr. Childrey's Britannia Baconica, p. 80. [" Britannia Baconica, or the Natural Rarities 

 of England, Scotland, and Wales, historically related, according to the precepts of Lord Bacon." 

 By Joshua Chiklrey, D.D. 1661. 8.] 



These bulletts are Dr. Th. Willises aperitive pills ; sc. he putts a barre of iron into the smith's 

 forge, and gives it a sparkling heat ; then thrusts it against a roll of brimstone, and the barre will 

 melt down into these bulletts ; of wliich he made his aperitive pills. In this region is a great deale 

 of iron, and the Bath waters give sufficient evidence that there is store of sulphur ; so that heretofore 

 when the earthquakes were hereabouts, store of such bulletts must necessarily be made and 

 vomited up. [Dr. Willis was one of the most eminent physicians of his age, and author of nume- 

 rous Latin works on medical subjects. The above extract is a curious illustration of the state of 

 professional knowledge at the time. J. B.] 



Copperas. Thunder-stones, as the vulgar call them, are a pyrites ; their fibres doe all tend to the 

 centre. They are found at Broad Chalke frequently, and particularly in the earth pitts belonging to 

 the parsonage shares, below Bury Hill, next Knighton hedge ; but wee are too farre from a navigable 

 river to make profit by them ; but at the Isle of Wight they are gathered from the chalkie rocks, 

 and carried by boates to Deptford, to make copperas ; where they doe first expose them to the aire 



